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Why John Tory is the best choice for millennials

John Tory is the only mayoral candidate with an ambitious transit plan that is ideal for downtown-dwelling echo boomers.

Mayoral candidate John Tory attends a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the playground in Rotary Peace Park in Toronto on July 30, 2014. Tory's SmartTrack is the best transit planfor getting the downtown moving again, writes Jordan Whelan. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Jordan Whelan

Sat., Aug. 23, 2014

For nearly two decades, my generation has witnessed wave upon wave of self-interested “adults” bickering across the floor of city hall about the future of transit.

A quick Google search reveals blueprints for what is now referred to as the downtown relief line drawn up around the time AOL began distributing free Internet trial CDs.

The endless, fruitless discussions since then have done the greatest disservice to a young generation that has bet big on the presumption that the long-promised transit expansion will soon become a reality.

As baby boomers sought square footage in suburbia, echo boomers (or millennials) fed urbanite growth in downtown. According to the 2011 census, close to half of the downtown core’s population is made up of echo boomers with a median age of 35.

But as crane after crane feeds population density and cars are ditched for Metropass plans, one must ask, have we millennials gambled our future on a system deep-frozen in time?

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Given these high stakes, Torontonian echo boomers ought to be closely studying the current slate of mayoral candidates to determine which one is most likely to get the downtown moving again.

Of the three front-runners, the choice is clear. is currently thwarting an active project on Eglinton; Olivia Chow has labelled a downtown relief line “not a priority” while pushing for increased bus service. Among them, only John Tory has an ambitious transit plan at the centre of his campaign — the 22-stop “SmartTrack” surface rail proposal extending from Mississauga to Markham.

Tory is up 10 points since his plan’s release. This should be stupefying to no one given its ability to ameliorate the current nightmare for those who live in or commute to and from the city’s core. SmartTrack is a modern solution that’s a far cry from a system in which drivers change streetcar lines by prodding them with a stick.

Tory’s track would stretch between commerce hubs such as Markham, which house more than 400 head offices, and the thousands of jobs in and around Pearson airport. It allows for the latte-sipping yuppie to whisk off to work on weekdays while maintaining a trendy base in the core. For the many carless millennials who have resigned themselves to being passed over for jobs due to geographic proximity, SmartTrack would be a godsend.

Take those in the transit wasteland known as Liberty Village. For residents there, Tory’s plan potentially represents the difference between a commute consisting of a streetcar, subway and bus ride and one involving a single track steps from home.

Ironically, Tory’s plan is a derivative of an idea that Chow’s stepson has been floating for years. Dubbed “Liberty on the GO,” Layton’s proposal would work to off-load streetcar congestion onto parallel GO surface rail tracks. Overseeing the Front St. corridor, Layton quickly grasped that streetcars and buses add to congestion, while surface rail aids in relief.

SmartTrack also solves an image problem. If Toronto hopes to be seen as a world-class, progressive, 21st-century city, streets cluttered with streetcars and antiquated buses — Chow’s preferred duo — send the wrong message.

But most importantly, SmartTrack addresses the all-important time factor: it’s designed with the urgency of the problem in mind. With roughly a million new residents expected to arrive in the city in the next decade, the already intolerable congestion problem is set to get much worse. Tory’s SmartTrack will take only a predicted seven years to complete, in part because 90 per cent of it will be built on existing public lands.

How the city tackles its transit mess over the next decade will be an important determinant of the quality of life for all Torontonians, and particularly for my generation and for our children.

Millennials are witnessing a Houdini act on our CPP; we are too often unemployed, precariously employed or working as expendable unpaid interns; and we are inheriting a health-care system constructed on a house of cards. This is our lot in part because we vote in low numbers, so politicians see our interests as a low priority.

We cannot make the same mistake come October.

Jordan Whelan is an entrepreneur who also serves as President of Grey Smoke Media, a communications and experiential marketing firm in Toronto.

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